Immigration and integration in a Mediterranean city : the making of the citizen in fifteenth-century Barcelona

Immigration and Integration in a

Mediterranean City:

The Making of the Citizen in

Fifteenth-Century Barcelona

Volume 1

Carolina Obradors Suazo

Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to

obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute

European University Institute

Department of History and Civilization

Immigration and Integration in a Mediterranean City:

The Making of the Citizen in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona.

Volume 1

Carolina Obradors Suazo

Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to

obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute

Examining Board

Prof. Luca Molà, (EUI, Supervisor).

Prof. Regina Grafe, (EUI, Second Reader).

Dr. Roser Salicrú i Lluch (Institució Milà i Fontanals -CSIC, External Supervisor).

Prof. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla (EUI, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville). Prof. James Amelang (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid).

© Carolina Obradors Suazo, 2015.

No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author

I

Immigration and Integration in a Mediterranean City:

The Making of the Citizen in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona

Carolina Obradors Suazo

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Luca Molà Abstract

.

This thesis explores the norms, practices, and experiences that conditioned urban belonging in Late Medieval Barcelona. A combination of institutional, legal, intellectual and cultural analysis, the dissertation investigates how citizenship evolved and functioned on the Barcelonese stage.

To this end, the thesis is structured into two parts. Part 1 includes four chapters, within which I establish the legal and institutional background of the Barcelonese citizen. Citizenship as a fiscal and individual privilege is contextualised within the negotiations that shaped the limits and prerogatives of monarchical and municipal power from the thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries. This analysis brings out the dialogical nature of citizenship. I study how the evolution of citizenship came to include the whole citizenry of Barcelona as a major actor in the constant definition and perception of the rights and duties of the citizen. In an attempt to mirror the considerable literature on Italian jurists, the last chapter of part 1 contrasts the legal intricacies of Barcelonese citizenship with the thought developed by major contemporary Catalan jurists.

From the analyses conducted in these first chapters, I argue that reputation was the basis of citizenship in fifteenth-century Barcelona. Thus, the three chapters that constitute part 2 are devoted to a cultural analysis of citizenship and unravel the social mechanisms that determined the creation of citizen reputation. The making of the citizen is therefore placed at the core of Barcelonese daily life in an attempt to elaborate on the social imagination and experience of citizenship in the Catalan city.

Throughout the whole dissertation, Barcelona and the Barcelonese remain at the core of the analysis. The richness of the material conserved for this city allows me to employ micro-analytical lenses in the study of the citizenry and its citizens, exploring, in the words of Pietro Costa, the ‘exasperation of differences’ that characterised the experience of medieval citizenship. Nonetheless, Barcelona also emerges in this study as a methodological reference point that can help to reframe medieval citizenship in broader terms, shedding new light on the meaning of civic life in the Late Medieval Mediterranean.

II

III

A mis abuelos y abuelas.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME I

A

……….

L

A

………...

L

T

F

………

INTRODUCTION……….1

Late Medieval Citizenship and Fifteenth-Century Barcelona: A historiographical account………..1

Sources and Methodology………...15

Structure of the Thesis……….24

PART I LATE MEDIEVAL BARCELONA AND THE DEFINITION OF THE CITIZEN. AN INSTITUTIONAL AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Chapter I: Features of Urban Society in the Crown of Aragon (TheThirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries). The Model of Barcelona………31

Building a Political Interaction. The Urban Political System of the Crown of Aragon…..32

On the Features of Urban Institutional Organisation: An Approach to the Role and Dynamics of the Council of the Hundred (1249 –Fifteenth Century)………..35

Living in the Cities under the Rule of the King of Aragon: Considering Barcelona’s main Social and Economic Features (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries)……….45

Chapter II: The Progressive Articulation of a Citizenship Law between the Monarchy and the Council of the Hundred (1249-1385)………..55

Introduction……….55

Citizenship under the Control of the Crown: Emergence………57

Towards a Municipal Citizenship………..63

New Royal Interventions……… 67

The Crown and the City in the Projection of Citizenship: Retracing the Reception of Barcelonese Citizenship in the ‘Viles de Carreratge’………..72

Conclusions………..79

Chapter III: From Citizenship to Citizenry. Citizenship as a Prerogative of the City and its Citizens (1385-1457)………..83

Introduction: On the First Evidences of a New Documentary Tradition………83

‘Admetre en Ciutadanatge’: The Informacions de la Ciutadania (1375-1457)……….88

The Citizen in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona: Rights, Duties and Ambiguities………94

‘Expel·lir/Gitar de Ciutadanatge’: Citizenship and Institutional Exclusion……… 134

‘Sortir de Ciutadanatge’: Rejecting Citizenship……….. 141

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Chapter IV: From Legal Practice to Legal Theory. Thinking the Citizen in Late Medieval

Catalonia………147

Introduction……….147

Medieval Citizenship within the Tradition of Legal Thought: The Mirror of the Italian Jurists: Bartolus de Sassoferrato (1313-1357) and Baldus degli Ubaldi (1327-1400)……….153

Other Contexts, Other Concerns: Gradating Citizenship in Late Medieval Catalonia..164

Some Final Thoughts: Jurists’ Reflections between Political Thought and Social Practices……….186

PART II BECOMING A CITIZEN: INTEGRATION EXPERIENCES IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BARCELONA Chapter V: Foreign Citizens in Late Medieval Barcelona………...195

Introduction: Foreigners, Strangers and Foreign Citizens………195

Barcelona and Its Foreigners: Precedents (twelfth-fourteenth centuries)………..201

Foreigners in the Informacions de la Ciutadania: Description of the Main Profiles…..206

Foreign Citizens Practising Citizenship………..218

Conclusions………..246

Chapter VI: On the Spaces of the Citizenry. Forms, Mechanisms, and Influence of Solidarity Networks………253

Introduction: Completing the Social Experience of Medieval Citizenship………253

For the Sake of Friendship: On the Nature and Role of Protectors in the Definition of Citizenship……….257

Families and Kinsmen in the Making of the Citizen……….263

Negotiating Citizenship within Professional Solidarities………..285

The Citizen in the Streets: Neighbourliness, Belonging and Citizenship………302

Conclusions………..321

Chapter VII: At the Margins of the Citizenry? Women, Converts, the Poor and Citizenship………325

Introduction: On Marginal Lenses……….325

Gender and Citizenship in Fifteenth-Century Barcelona………..328

Jews and Converts as Citizens………..341

The Poor within the Citizenry………361

Conclusions………366

CONCLUSIONS………369

Defining the Citizen, Becoming a Citizen: Barcelonese Citizenship in light of Institutional, Legal, Intellectual and Cultural Analysis………370

An Exercise of Asymmetrical Comparison………..376

VII

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first words of gratitude should go to my supervisor, Professor Luca Molà. I thank him for his constant support of my work, his advice and his endless availability. His help and his encouragements have continually fuelled my motivation and invigorated my self-confidence as a researcher.

Barcelonese citizens of the Late Middle Ages entered my life well before the EUI. In July 2008, Dr. Roser Salicrú i Lluch first proposed to me to undertake a doctoral research along these lines. I want to thank her warmly, not only for the initial idea of this dissertation but also for her dedication in pushing me towards research. While I am the author of this PhD, she was the mother of this project and it is my pleasure and honour to ‘close’ this research with her among the members of the evaluating committee.

This research has benefited considerably from encounters and discussions with other professors at the EUI. My second readers, Professors Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Regina Grafe carefully read different drafts of this thesis and attended several of the presentations I gave at seminars and workshops. The discussions we had and their comments have helped me to clarify and reshape many of my ideas. I only hope I was able to enrich the final text accordingly. I am also deeply grateful for the interest that Professor Antonella Romano has always shown towards my work. Some of the questions she asked first during my interview and in several seminars later pushed me to considerably rethink the methodological basis of this dissertation.

The very first stages of this research were conducted at the University of Barcelona, where I wrote a MA thesis on foreigners and integration in early fifteenth-century Barcelona. I was then and now grateful to the interest and early guidance of my former supervisor, Professor Teresa Maria Vinyoles i Vidal. My first steps in that institution and in the academic world were, however, guided by Professor Prim Bertran Roigé, who passed away a few months ago. I owe the resolution to devote my career to the study of the Middle Ages to his insatiable and contagious passion for history. His love for life and the memory of his teachings have always accompanied and strengthened me, and they will continue to do so.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to attend conferences and workshops where I met other scholars with whom to share my thoughts on issues such as social organisation, solidarity, foreigners, integration, citizenship, and reputation in the cities of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. I am particularly indebted to Arie Van Steensel, Justin Colson, and Beatrice Del Bo for the organisation of very fruitful events where PhD candidates

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like me were able to share their research with other young scholars, as well as with renowned historians such as Wim Blockmans and Reinhold Mueller.

I cannot but be deeply grateful to other senior scholars who were repeatedly available to discuss my work and share their knowledge about Medieval and Early Modern Barcelona with me. In the beautiful terrace of the Museum of Catalan History, in the Port of Barcelona, or in the corridors of the University of Florence, Professor James Amelang was twice able to find some time to converse with me. I am also very grateful to him for his will and availability to be a member of the evaluating committee. Professor David Igual also showed his interest for my work and helped with some bibliographical references. Professor Eulàlia Duran i Grau, author of a BA thesis on Barcelonese citizenship in the 1950s, kindly invited me to visit her in her apartment, where I could borrow a copy of the work from her youth. I was also lucky enough to benefit from a private lesson on Medieval Catalan law by Professor Max Turull Rubinat in his office at the Faculty of Law at the University of Barcelona. I shall also refer to the generosity of Professor Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, who did not hesitate to share with me her archival notes and who checked her own databases for some extra information on some of ‘my’ citizens.

This thesis has been produced through the good offices of two institutions: the European University Institute and the CSIC (Spanish National Council of Research). Under the supervision of Dr. Salicrú, the CSIC gave me the opportunity to encounter and discuss regularly with other scholars having shown interest in my research, most notably Pere Verdés, Carles Vela, and Maria Elisa Soldani. I am particularly indebted to other PhD candidates at the CSIC who helped me enormously, both while I was there or elsewhere. I owe the elaboration of a database to the patience that Iván Armenteros showed in dealing with my technological inexpertise. I am grateful to Albert Reixach and Esther Tello for their careful readings on some of the sections devoted to fiscality. I also want to thank Esther for her kindness and continuous availability in collecting and scanning material for me. I cannot forget to thank the staff of the CSIC library for their efficiency and for treating me as another member of the Department during my visits. On a similar note, I have to thank the Historical Archives of the City of Barcelona (AHCB) and the Historical Archives of Notarial Registers (AHPB): their availability to digitalise and let me photograph large parts of their fonds has made it possible to complete this research at the distance.

Back in Florence, the European University Institute places its researchers within an atmosphere of continuous intellectual challenge, a very diverse community where we share our different views and methodologies, and listen and comment on a large variety of research. It gives us the very unique opportunity of listening to others and being continuously pushed to

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reshape and rethink our work to present it on different occasions to a variety of fellows. Throughout these last five years, my companions at the EUI have therefore been a crucial intellectual and emotional support, without whom this project would have been carried out with much difficulty. I thank Hélène Soldini, Ozden Mercan, and Lisa Dallavalle for the many emails and the many coffees we shared together. Social life in Florence was daily animated with the company of Alan Granadino, Pol Dalmau, Robrecht Declercq, Tilmann Kulke, and Moritz von Brescius, among many others. I shared many library hours with José Miguel Escribano. Ievgen Khvalkov helped me with some of the transcriptions included in the appendix. I am deeply grateful to James White for his language corrections, which he did with much efficiency and accuracy. Besides my new friends in Florence, old friends, wherever they have been, have continued to be important in my professional and personal development. I thus thank Julieta, María, Clara, and Liana for being there, for being a model of friendship, and for remaining a continuous source of stimulation and encouragement.

My warmest and deepest gratitude goes to my family. I thank my parents, Domingo and Celia, for never questioning my choices, even when they were not clear to them. I thank them for their confidence and their constant help in so many ways. I thank them for teaching me through their example that effort, honesty, and love makes every goal possible. I am grateful to my brothers for their complicity in my plans and for always pushing their little sister forward with humour and affection. I reserve a word for my nieces, Lucía and Carla, and my nephew Diego, who have grown up with their aunt abroad and have been disappointed with my many absences. I hope they will later understand better when seeing the large amount of pages that follow.

My last word should go to my soul mate, whom I encountered here in Florence. Thank you Brian, for your patience and your honesty, for your love and your humour, from which I learned to view things in a brighter light. Thank you for laughing, worrying, discussing, and thinking with me, whether in Italy, Spain, or Denmark.

A todos, gracias.

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ABBREVIATIONS AHCB: Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona AHPB: Arxiu Històric de Protocols

ACB: Arxiu Capitular de la Santa Església Catedral de Barcelona ANC: Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya, Sant Cugat.

ACA: Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó.

ABL: Antiquiores Barchinonensium Leges, quas vulgus Usaticos appellat.

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Foreign citizens profiles (origins and professions) from the Informacions (1395-1425).

Table 2: Catalan migration to Barcelona through the Informacions (1395-1425).

Figure 1. Map. Catalan migration to Barcelona from the Informacions de la Ciutadania: main localities of provenance.

Figure 2. Map. Catalan migration to Barcelona from the Informacions de la Ciutadania: surrounding localities.

Figure 3: Genealogical tree of the Sarrovira family.

Figure 4: Manuscript reproduction of the stone slab in the Plaça del Blat which represented the city of Barcelona in a circular form. Extracted from Albert García Espuche and Manuel Guàrdia i Bassols, Espai i Societat a la Barcelona pre-industrial. Barcelona: Edicions de la Magrana, 1986.

Figure 5: The four quarters of Barcelona. Image extracted from Cristina Borau Morell, Els promotors de capelles i retaules a la Barcelona del segle XIV. Barcelona: Fundació

Noguera, 2003.

Figure 6: The streets of Barcelona in the fourteenth century, according to censuses and notarial documentation. Extracted from Cristina Borau Morell, Els promotors de capelles i retaules a la Barcelona del segle XIV. Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2003.

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Introduction

A city is a multitude of people united by a

bond of community, named for its ‘citizens’, that is, from the residents of the city [because it has jurisdiction over and contains the lives of many]. Now urbs is the name for the actual buildings, while civitas is not the stones, but the inhabitants.

Isidore of Seville, Etimologiae, XV, 21

LATE MEDIEVAL CITIZENSHIP AND FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BARCELONA:A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT.

‘The developments between, say, 1050 and 1150 mark the end of one urban age and the beginning of another.’ With this statement, Peter Riesenberg evoked the host of transformations that restructured the economic, political, intellectual and social features of Late Medieval Europe from the twelfth century onwards. The revival of commerce turned cities into vibrant centres of continuous exchange: merchants, pilgrims, students, professors, peasants, and artisans seeking new opportunities constantly roamed the roads and thronged the cities. Urban Europe was reborn as a frantic and dynamic space in constant motion.2

This context of urban growth entailed dramatic changes in the relationships between individuals and the political and social communities they inhabited.3 _{As these}

1 _{Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A Beach, Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, (New}

York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 305. Latin original: ‘Civitas est hominum multitudo societatis vincula adunata, dicta a civibus, id est ab ipsis incolis urbis [pro eo quod plurimum consciscat et contineat vitas]. Nam urbs ipsa moenia sunt, civitas autem non saxa, sed habitatores vocantur.’ See in Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologiae, ed. J. Oroz Reta, M.A Marcos Casquero and M.C Díaz y Díaz (latin-spanish edition) (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2004), 1059.

This claim for the human essence of the city (‘the city is not its walls but the people who inhabit it’) has a long tradition among commentators of urban life. First mentioned by Thucydides, it has also been used by a diversity of authors such as Shakespeare in Coriolanus and the Catalan lawyer Narcís Feliu de la Penya (1642-1712) in his Anales de Cataluña. On this tradition: James Amelang, “Gent de la Ribera” i

altres assaigs sobre la Barcelona moderna, (Vic: Eumo, 2008), 19.

2 _{Peter Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western tradition. Plato to Rousseau. (Chapel Hill and London: The}

University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 109-110.

3 _{I take the term community as a neutral reference to the human associations that formed cities or other}

local settlements. On the term ‘community’, Justin R. Colson, “Local Communities in Fifteenth-Century London: Craft, Parish and Neighbourhood”, (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 2011), 19-21. For an

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relationships became more complex, a new consciousness of citizenship emerged.4 _It

did so within the framework of a revived focus on Roman law and in respect to new economic concerns such as privileges, profit, and organisation.5 _{Bearing this context in}

mind, this thesis will explore how citizenship was legally articulated (part I) and experienced through diverse feelings of belonging to the city (part II) in Late Medieval Barcelona. The following review will provide an account of the major literature on medieval citizenship, thereby producing a framework structuring the questions and hypotheses which will guide this research.

Medieval citizenship: approaches, sources, and traditions.

In his book A Brief History of Citizenship, Derek Heater affirmed that ‘in medieval Europe citizenship was of relatively peripheral importance.’6 _{Such a statement has}

been continually revised, since a varied literature has shown that, on the contrary, citizenship lay at the very heart of medieval urban life. Often, but not exclusively, from the perspective of the Italian city-state, a range of sources have helped to develop the study of medieval citizenship from institutional, legal, intellectual, socio-economic, and cultural perspectives. Scholars have retraced the specificities of medieval citizenship by thoroughly contextualising it.Traditionally seen as a formal relationship between individuals and their political community, deeper insights have revealed that ‘even though the legal definition was at the heart of citizenship, that relationship went far from the legal domain,’ as Simona Cerutti, Maarten Prak, Marc Boone, and Robert Descimon claimed in 1996.7 _{Taking the example of Barcelona, this thesis is precisely}

devoted to reaching an integrative view on citizenship, one that combines the legal basis of citizenship with an exploration of the further domains where it was formed.

insightful account on the multi-faceted and variable nature of the term, see: Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington, “Communities in Early Modern England. Introduction,” in Communities in Early Modern

England: networks, place, rhetoric, eds. A. Shepard and P. Withington. (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 2000), 1-12.

4 _{Riesenberg, Citizenship, 108.} 5 _{Riesenberg, Citizenship, 108-110.}

6 _{Derek B. Heater, A Brief History of Citizenship, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 42.} 7 _{Simona Cerutti, Maarten Prak, Marc Boone, Robert Descimon, “Introduction: citizenship between}

individual and community, 14th-18th centuries,” in Statuts individuels, statuts corporatifs et statuts

judiciaires dans les villes européennes (moyen âge et temps modernes), eds. M Prak and M. Boone,

3

An account of the literature on medieval citizenship must refer first to the classic contribution of Dina Bizzarri (1916). A pioneer, Bizzarri established the use of the statuti (local laws) of the medieval communi as the main sources from which to draw a legal picture of the medieval citizen. Interested in identifying the different legal capacities of city’s inhabitants, Bizzarri reviewed the range of rights and duties that determined the attachment of the citizen to the political community. She also reflected on the differences between the civis and other minor figures such as the

habitator and the habitante.8 _{As William Bowsky showed later when focussing on the}

case of Siena,9 _{the contrast of various statuti pushed Bizzarri to pinpoint the variability}

of citizenship, thus suggesting the need to choose specific frameworks of analysis when conducting scholarly examination on this topic. Later studies followed in the steps of these two scholars, analysing the normative features of the citizen and the notable differences in this category from one city to the next.10 _{These pioneering}

studies defined a new historiographical trend, one which turned the Italian city-state into a privileged laboratory for grasping the nature and dynamics of medieval citizenship. Scholarship took several decades to broaden this analytical space and take more interest in expressions of citizenship in other areas of Western Europe.11

Studies such as Bizzarri’s and Bowsky’s recreated the legal framework of the citizen, understanding the citizen’s belonging to the community in terms of allegiance to a common normative code: citizens were those who accepted to live under, and commit to, one law. From the 1970s, Julius Kirshner highlighted the more dynamic nature of citizenship as a legal phenomenon. Focussing on the consilia, that is, on the opinions of relevant jurists over specific conflicts, Kirshner unravelled the uncertainty of citizenship: since the prerogatives, duties, and limits of the citizen were easily

8 _{Dina Bizzarri, “Ricerche sul diritto di cittadinanza nella costituzione medievale,”Studi Senesi 32, (1916):}

19-136.

9 _{William Bowsky, “Medieval Citizenship: the Individual and the State in the Commune of Siena, 1287-}

1355,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History IV, (1967): 195-243. For a more recent approach to Sienese citizenship: Gabriela Piccini, “Differenze socio-economiche, identità civiche e ‘gradi di cittadinanza’ a Siena nel Tre e Quattrocento,”) Cittadinanza e disuguaglianze economiche: le origine

storiche di un problema europeo XIII-XVI secolo Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen Âge

125/2, (2013).

10 _{Patrick Gilli, “ Comment cesser d’être étranger: Citoyens et non citoyens dans la pensée juridique}

italienne de la fin du Moyen Âge,”in L’étranger au Moyen Âge, Actes du XXXème Congrès de la SHMESP, (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000): 59-77.

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questioned, the opinion of legal experts was requested on myriad occasions. The thoughts and conclusions of jurists such as Bartolus de Sassoferrato (1314-1357) and Baldus degli Ubaldi (1327-1400), among many others, contributed strongly to developing the legal definition of citizenship, which was far from being rigidly established: rather, it was progressively developed by each of the cases that questioned it.12

To be sure, other scholars dealt with citizenship by examining the work and thought of medieval jurists.13 _{Diego Quaglioni, for instance, put them at the core of his}

reflections on the legal definition of citizenship. In his view, jurists dealing with citizenship had to face a vacuum in Roman law in this respect. ‘In a quest for substance,’ they combined local laws with their knowledge of the classics and thus elaborated some formulations regarding citizenship. Some of these elaborations had a major impact on Early Modern and Modern thought, such as the defence of the parity between native and acquired citizenship. In the words of Quaglioni himself, this was ‘the most important theoretical contribution the Middle Ages left as a legacy to the modern and contemporary world: the parity established between acquired and native citizenship as a fictio iuris.’14

Quaglioni’s exalted reference recalls one of the historiographical debates that has developed within medieval citizenship studies, that of the relationship between citizenship and equality. Indeed, despite the opposition of jurists to nativism, only natives were able to access public office in many medieval communi, while professional and economic conditions determined strong gradations within the

12 _{Some of Kirshner’s most relevant contributions have pointed in this direction: “Civitas sibi faciat}

civem: Bartolus Sassoferrato’s Doctrine on the Making of the Citizen,” Speculum 48/4, (1973): 694-713; “Paolo di Castro on “cives ex privilegio”: a controversy over the legal qualifications for public office in early fifteenth-century Florence, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, eds. A.Mohlo and J. Tedeschi (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), 227-264; “Ars imitatur naturam: a Consilium of Baldus on naturalization in Florence, Viator 5, (1974): 289-331 and “Between Nature and Culture: an Opinion of Baldus of Perugia on Venetian Citizenship as Second Nature,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance

Studies 9, (1979): 179-208.

13 _{Other examples: William Bowsky, “A New Consilium of Cino of Pistoia (1324): Citizenship, Residence}

and Taxation,” Speculum 42/3 (1967): 431-441; Peter Riesenberg, “Civism and Roman Law in fourteenth-century Italian society,”Explorations in Economic History 7/1-2,(1969): 237-254; Peter Riesenberg, “The Consilia literature: a Prospectus,” Manuscripta 6/1, (1962): 3-22.

14 _{Diego Quaglioni, “The Legal Definition of Citizenship in the Late Middle Ages,”in City-States in Classical} Antiquity and Medieval Italy, eds. A. Mohlo, K. Raaflaub, and J. Emlen, (Stuttgart: Frank Steiner Verlag,

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citizenry and shaped citizenship as a mechanism of social exclusion.15 _{Nonetheless, the}

legal historian Riesenberg did not hesitate in defending the idea that citizenship in the Middle Ages created equality: despite the unbalanced access to political office, it ensured a space for equal legal capacities used mainly in economic terms. The result was, in Riesenberg’s words, ‘an incomplete egalitarian society.’16

Riesenberg’s ‘equalitarian’ view on citizenship stemmed from his ‘realistic’ understanding of the medieval citizen. He argued that individuals, mainly merchants and artisans, sought citizenship privileges for benefits and exemptions rather than with the intention of consolidating any sort of strong sentiment with the civic community they inhabited.17 _{Although these strong claims have been considered polemical and}

used with reservation by other scholars,18 _{it should be recalled that Riesenberg himself}

recognised that this pragmatic function of citizenship could only be considered as one part of this complex phenomenon: medieval thinkers certainly thought of citizenship in more ethical terms.

Perhaps with the hope of reaching a more comprehensive understanding of citizenship, Riesenberg wrote his book Citizenship in the Western Tradition. Plato to

Rousseau (1992). A book on legal and political theory, this work retraces thought about

citizenship from Ancient Greece to the eve of the French Revolution. In the parts devoted to medieval citizenship, Riesenberg noted the progressive displacement of theologians in thought about citizenship. While these authors had had an important role in the early Middle Ages through their development of a universalising Christian theory of citizenship that paved the way to Heaven (St. Augustine), the emergence of citizenship as a practical and concrete privilege regulating specific and individual conditions distanced them from the debates on citizenship. Indeed, Riesenberg claims that scholastics did not contribute much to theories on citizenship: with the exception

15 _{Giacomo Todeschini, “Introduzione,” in Cittadinanza e desuguaglianze economiche: le origine storiche} di un problema europeo, Mélanges École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge 125/2 (2013):

http://mefrm.revues.org/1289.

16 _{Peter Riesenberg, “Citizenship and Equality in Late Medieval Italy,” Studia Gratiana 15, (1972):}

424-439; Riesenberg, Citizenship, 155-157.

17 _{Peter Riesenberg, “Citizenship at Law in Late Medieval Italy,” Viator 5, (1974): 333-345.}

18 _{Quaglioni, “The Legal Definition,” 162; Laura de Angelis, “La cittadinanza a Firenze (XIV-XV secolo),”in} Cittadinanza e mestieri. Radicamento urbano e integrazione nelle città bassomedievali (secc. XIII-XVI),

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of Marsilius of Padua, they could not connect the moral excellence and political action of the Aristotelian citizen with their own realities.19

Thus, thinking about citizenship developed in more analytical and technical terms and became the realm of legalists who, relying on their knowledge of both the

Ius Commune and the classics, discussed its intricacies through the numerous consilia

they delivered.20 _{This, of course, did not prevent citizenship from also evolving on a}

moral basis as jurists themselves contributed to this endeavour by reflecting on the defining qualities of the good citizen in their work. Furthermore, in their attempt to retain citizens, governments utilised monumental architecture, impressive ceremonies, and other resources which were supposed to nurture citizens’ identification with their city and develop feelings such as civic love and loyalty. Thus, citizenship became ‘a condition of mind and sentiment, an emotional state carefully created and nurtured by city government.’21

Riesenberg’s remarks are deeply concerned with the effects of social and economic context in the ways citizenship functioned and was considered. Exclusively concerned with the Italian city-state,22 _{this context is framed in very general terms as}

the revival of commerce and urban growth. Nonetheless, it succeeds in arguing that new forms of citizenship emerged throughout the Middle Ages.

Similar concerns about the meaningful specificities of medieval citizenship pushed Pietro Costa to open his massive three-volume study on the history of citizenship in the Middle Ages.23 _{Regardless of his more theoretical interests, this}

major contribution has become a fundamental reference for any medievalist dealing with citizenship.

In this work, Costa synthesised previous claims regarding medieval citizenship and gave a more precise picture of the problems it poses and the potential strategies

19 _{Riesenberg, Citizenship, 164-167.} 20 _{Riesenberg, Citizenship, 162.} 21 _{Riesenberg, Citizenship, 135.}

22 _{This exclusivity of focus is taken to the point where he argues that one of the reasons which might}

explain the lack of interest in citizenship among Late Medieval theologians, mostly settled in Paris, was that ‘cities and citizens really mattered only in Italy.’ Riesenberg, Citizenship, 163.

23 _{Pietro Costa, Civitas: Storia della cittadinanza in Europa, 3 vol (Rome: Laterza, 1999-2001). Giuseppe}

Trebbi highlighted Costa’s choice to start this erudite review on the history of citizenship with the medieval city: Giuseppe Trebbi, “I diritti di cittadinanza nelle reppubliche italiane della prima età moderna: gli esempi di Firenze e Venezia,” in Cittadinanze, ed. G. Manganaro, (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2001), 137.

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with which it can be analysed. In short, he defined citizenship as the relationship of belonging between the individual and the political community. Thus, citizenship rested on three fundamental pillars: the individual, rights, and belonging. From this complex basis, the articulation of citizenship came to life in a rich diversity of forms:

There is not a single citizenship but a plurality of subjective conditions that are differentiated and hierarchised. Citizenship is not a uniform status: its contents are determined by a diversity of parameters that result in complex typologies: native or acquired citizens; cives ex privilegio or de gratia; citizens who have been settled in the city for long time or, in contrast, have recently arrived; citizens living mainly in the city or citizens spending long periods outside the city, who are therefore entitled to minor protection.24

To face this variability, Costa recognised the need to choose a historiographical position when studying medieval citizenship. Analysis interested in the legal practices of citizenship would have to deal with the strong fragmentation of medieval society and, therefore, the impossibility of making rigorous generalisations. It follows that it is necessary to focus on specific contexts to deal precisely with the internal complexities and multiple forms of citizenship. However, Costa stated clearly that this was not the purpose of his research, which he devoted to ‘arguments about how culture elaborates in order to delineate the image of an individual and his relationship with the civitas or the respublica, that is, the political community.’25 _{Interested in understanding how}

belonging was conceived throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, Costa composed a history of the ‘discourse of citizenship.’26

In this respect, this dissertation distances itself from Costa’s work and falls under the first historiographical trend he himself mentioned. Focussing on the case of Late Medieval Barcelona, this study aims to unravel in detail the specificities of one case study without renouncing the intention to present it as an inspiration for further research on medieval citizenship. In so doing, the thesis will follow a considerable

24 _{‘Non vi è una cittadinanza, ma una pluralità di condizioni soggetive differenziate e gerarchizzate. La}

cittadinanza non è uno status uniforme: i suoi contenuti sono determinati da parametri volta a volta diversi che danno luogo a complicate tipologie: cittadini originari o acquisiti, cives ex privilegio o de

gratia, cittadini di antica o recente immigrazione; ancora: cittadini che abitano prevalentemente in città

o cittadini residenti per lungo tempore fuori città, e allora dotati di minore tutela” Pietro Costa, Civitas, vol 1, 15.

25 _{Costa, Civitas, vol 1, 13.}

26 _{On the historiographical relevance of Costa’s work, see also: Trebbi, “I diritti di cittadinanza nelle}

8

number of studies that have also analysed citizenship from the perspective of a single case.27

In terms of this literature, it is necessary to highlight the contributions of Reinhold Mueller. In his exploration of the Venetian case, he connected local law with a large number of preserved citizenship privileges. In so doing, he painted a concrete picture of citizenship in Late Medieval Venice which brought stronger socio-economic perspectives into the study of medieval citizenship and uncovered the heterogeneity of the Venetian citizen.

More specifically, Mueller and his disciples undertook intensive research which covered the analysis of 3,628 citizenship privileges offered to more than 4,000 people during the period between 1300 and 1500. This revealed the highly economic nature of Venetian citizenship, since it emerged chiefly as a trading privilege determining the limits of a group that stood between the patriciate and the larger mass of habitatores. Yet, this group of cittadini was far from being uniform, as it included native citizens (civis originarius) and immigrants who could either be graciously conferred with the privilege (privilege de gratia) or acquire it by fulfilling specific residence requirements. In 1305, for instance, these requirements were fixed at 15 years for the privilege de

intus, which enabled the practice of local trade, and at 25 years of residence for the

privilege de extra, which permitted trade on a more international scale. The context of the city and its demographical needs modified the residence requirements needed to receive each of these two citizenships on various occasions, but their duality was always respected.28 _{Highlighting the uses of citizenship, these studies insist on the}

fundamental role of immigration in the creation and definition of the citizen. Thus, it is

27 _{Generally, however, in the form of articles. See, for instance:Luca Molà and Reinhold Mueller, “Essere}

straniero a Venezia nel tardo medioevo: accoglienza e rifiuto nei privilegi di cittadinanza e nelle sentenze criminale,” in Le migrazioni in Europa s. XIII-XVIII. Atti della 25 settimana di Studi di Prato. (Bagno-Ripoli: Le Monnier, 1994), 839-851. Laura de Angelis, “Immigrazione e concessioni di cittadinanza a Firenze e nei comuni italiani tra XIV e XV secolo,”Città e vita cittadina nei paesi dell’area

mediterranea, ed. B. Saitta, (Roma: Viella, 2006), 423-437; Christian Maurel, “Du citadinage à la

naturalité: l’intégration des étrangers à Marseille (XIII-XVème siècles),”Provence Historique 195-196, (1999): 333-352; Marc Boone, “Diritto di borghesia e particolarismo urbano nelle Fiandre borgognone e asburgiche (1384-1585), Cittadinanze, eds. S. Cerutti, R. Descimon and M. Prak, Quaderni Storici 89/2, (1995): 287-308. From this direction, we can also consider some of the articles included in the recent volume edited by Beatrice del Bo: Cittadinanza e mestieri. Radicamento urbano e integrazione nelle città

bassomedievali (sec. XIII-XVI), (Roma: Viella, 2014).

28 _{Reinhold Christopher Mueller, Immigrazione e cittadinanza nella Venezia medievale, (Roma: Viella,}

2010). The results of this intensive analysis have been gathered in a database which is now accessible on-line: http://www.civesveneciarum.net

9

from the analysis of foreign groups that further details on citizenship in other Italian and Western cities have been revealed.

The presence of foreigners in medieval Europe has developed as a dense field of study in its own right. The topic regained popularity in the late 1980s when a series of major conferences were organised first in Italy and then in other countries such as France and Germany. The proceedings from these events made public a variety of case studies, methods, sources, and approaches for grasping how the presence of foreigners was organised and experienced in urban medieval Europe.29 _{From a large}

range of sources (institutional, notarial, trials, and documents related to the procedures of citizenship acquisition), the diversity of foreigners has been portrayed (their close or distant origins, their occupations) and models of integration have been discussed, such as merchants who remained closely associated with their fellow countrymen within the structure of the ‘nationes’ or traders who established sound economic and familial ties with local business men. Some artisans of foreign origin engaged actively in the industries of their new cities: in some cases, some trades became foreign-held monopolies. Historiography driven by research on the Italian city-states has retraced the elements that conditioned the belonging and commitment of these foreign minorities to their new communities, exploring decisions like entering local families through marriage or remaining in close contact with cities of origin. Relationships with the authorities have also been carefully studied. Indeed, it was not uncommon for foreign merchants to offer their economic resources to monarchs and local authorities in order to gain their protection against arbitrary protectionist measures or xenophobic attacks, particularly noted in England.30

29 _{Some major examples: Forestieri e stranieri nelle città basso-medievali. Atti del seminario} Internazionale di Studio, (Florence: Libreria Salimbeni, 1988); Dentro la città: Stranieri e realtà urbane nell’Europa dei secoli XII-XVI, ed. G. Rossetti (Naples : Liguori, 1989); Les étrangers dans la ville. Minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, eds. J. Bottin and D. Calabi, (Paris :

Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1999); L’étranger au Moyen Âge, eds. P. Lardin and J.-L. Roch (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000); Comunità forestiere e ‘nationes’ nell’Europa dei secoli

XIII-XVI, ed. G. Petti-Balbi (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2001).

30 _{On the attacks against Flemish and Lombard merchants in medieval London, see, for instance: Derek}

Pearsall, “Strangers in Late Fourteenth-Century London,” in The Stranger in Medieval Society, eds. F.R.P. Akehurst and S. Cain Van d’Elden (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 46-62. For two examples of monographic research on foreign communities which have focused on the questions and problems exposed above, see Luca Molà, La comunità dei Lucchesi a Venezia. Immigrazione e industria

della seta nel tardo medioevo (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1994); Maria Elisa

10

As the literature has noted, access to citizenship was paramount in all these contexts. While helping to create a more stable atmosphere for foreigners, citizenship also had a pragmatic use, since the possession of a citizenship privilege entailed tantalising economic benefits in the form of trading exemptions: this turned dual and even triple citizenships into a common phenomenon around the Mediterranean.

Placing citizenship at the core of integration processes, studies on foreigners have allowed historians to successfully reframe it from social and economic perspectives. Further developments have introduced cultural concerns in citizenship studies. In this regard, two major examples are to be noted: the book by Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations. Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish

America (2003) and Simona Cerutti’s most recent work, Étrangers. Étude d’une condition d’incertitude dans une société d’Ancien Régime (2012). With an emphasis on

the citizen rather than on citizenship, these authors have both reflected on and recreated the strong role of performance, observation, and reputation in the making of the citizen.

In an intensive study of eighteenth-century Turin, Cerutti employed ‘a radical empiricism’31 _{to explore the uncertain position of foreigners. She conceived of the}

foreigner not so much as an individual of distinct geographical origin but rather as an urban actor unable to access the principal ‘citizen resources’ and therefore incapable of practising citizenship. From the category of the foreigner, Cerutti, like Herzog, reinterpreted citizenship as an informal and primary pact between the citizen and the citizenry he lived amongst, a constant dialogue that seals belonging to the citizen body with no need of further formal recognitions:

Before a ‘state-controlled’ perspective, according to which social statutes such as the ‘citizen’ and the ‘native’ depend on the recognition of central authorities, a ‘social’ model needs to be considered, one which connects these statutes to inscription within local fabrics. Within this framework, belonging is seen as a process, the first steps of which are linked to social recognition within the local community: it is only from this first level that naturalisation, that is, belonging to the state, is formed.32

31 _{Simona Cerutti, Étrangers. Étude d’une condition d’incertitude dans une société d’Ancien Régime,}

(Montrouge: Bayard, 2012), 25.

32 _{‘À une vision “étatiste” qui fait dépendre les statuts sociaux de “bourgeois” et “naturel” de la}

reconnaissance des autorités centrales, un modèle “social” est opposé, qui relie ce statut à une inscription dans les tissus locaux. Dans ce cadre, l’appartenance est un processus dont la première étape

11

Cerutti’s ideas were framed by an eighteenth century context and include concepts of the state, central authorities, and naturalisation that should not be projected onto fifteenth-century Barcelona, where medieval citizenship remained an essential urban phenomenon. Nonetheless, my research rests on a deep interest in unravelling the cultural dimension of the Barcelonese citizenship at the end of the Middle Ages. With a particular concern for the daily life of the citizens of Barcelona in these distant times, the thesis aims to explore whether citizenship and belonging in Barcelona were also based on a primary alliance between citizens and their fellow citizens and questions the forms and dynamics of such a pact. Yet, the research cannot ignore the multi-faceted nature of citizenship that historiographical traditions have brought to light. Believing that the potential of medieval Barcelona provides an integrative view on citizenship, I will also discuss how precise institutional, legal, and intellectual backgrounds conditioned the making of the citizen. In short, this thesis will be devoted to uncovering the diverse negotiations that influenced the definitions, perceptions, and experiences of citizenship in early fifteenth-century Barcelona.

Why Barcelona? Placing citizenship within Barcelonese historiography.

It is a fact that historiography on medieval Barcelona has not tackled citizenship in detail: it has certainly retraced the lives, interests, backgrounds, conditions, and decisions of a variety of citizens inhabiting Barcelona in the Late Middle Ages but has never intensively dealt with the nature and meaning of their citizenship.

This lack of interest mirrors the general condition of Barcelonese historiography. Research on medieval Barcelona remains scarce and certainly does not correspond with the richness found in the archival fonds. Of course, such a general observation needs to be nuanced: while classical works from the 1960s and 1970s have done much for our knowledge of the economic and institutional evolution of Barcelona from the thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries, young scholars are now conducting

est liée à la reconnaissance sociale à l’intérieur de la communauté locale; ce n’est qu’à partir de cette échelle que la naturalisation- l’appartenance au niveau de l’État- prends corps’ Cerutti, Étrangers, 18.

12

more refined research on specifically defined problems. This is improving the position of Barcelonese studies in the field of medieval history.33

To give a very brief picture, classic works on medieval Barcelona focussed on debates surrounding the so-called Catalan crisis of the Late Middle Ages.34 _Claude

Carrère’s massive Barcelone, centre économique à l’époque des difficultés 1380-1462 (1967) followed the thesis developed by Pierre Vilar, and supported by Jaume Vicens Vives, which pictured a long structural crisis that had its first episodes in the second half of the fourteenth century. In her intensive work, Carrère showed how the city maintained its active commercial projection towards the Mediterranean until the 1430s. At this point, a comprehensive drop in the import rate laid the foundations for a more substantive economic recession. Mario del Treppo (1972) presented a real alternative to this traditional model. Investigating later periods of commercial dynamism in Barcelona during the 1450s, he suggested a deceleration of economic growth rather than a more dramatic recession in the 1430s. As a result, del Treppo presented the Civil War (1462-1472) as a cause rather than a consequence of the crisis and defended the strong commercial prominence of the Catalan city throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. Recently, Maria Elisa Soldani (2010) came to similar conclusions and gave life to the city’s vitality by reconstructing in detail the presence, strategies, and economic interests of Tuscan merchants settling in fifteenth-century Barcelona.35

However, the evolution of Barcelona’s international projection needs to be understood within the background of the internal political and economic tensions that characterised the city’s life throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This

33_{For instance: Iván Armenteros Martínez, “La esclavitud en Barcelona a fines de la Edad Media}

(1479-1516). El impacto de la primera trata atlántica en un mercado tradicional de esclavos,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Barcelona, 2012). Miquel Raufast Chico has been reflecting on the relationship between the monarch of the crown of Aragon and Barcelona by studying ceremonies and public celebrations. See, for instance: “‘E vingueren los officis e confraries ab llur entremeses e balls’. Una aproximación al estamento artesanal en la Barcelona bajomedieval, a partir del estudio de las ceremonias de entrada real,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 36 no.2, (2006): 651-686 or Miquel Raufast Chico, “¿Un mismo ceremonial para dos dinastías? Las entradas reales de Martín el Humano (1397) y Fernando I (1412) en Barcelona,” En la España Medieval 30, (2007): 91-30.Intensive research on the fiscal regime of Barcelona has also been conducted: Pere Ortí i Gost, Renda i fiscalitat en una ciutat medieval: Barcelona, segles

XII-XIV, (Barcelona: CSIC, 2000). This renewal of Barcelonese studies should also include the intensive

and well-documented research of Elisa Soldani on the presence of Tuscan merchants in the city.

34_{For a detailed account of this historiographical debate: Gaspar Feliu i Montfort, “La crisis catalana de la}

Baja Edad Media: Estado de la cuestión,” Hispania LXIV/2 no 217, (2004): 435-466.

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task was first fulfilled by Carme Batlle i Gallart in her book La crisis social y económica

de Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV (1973). She framed the fratricidal opposition

between the party of the Biga (oligarchy) and the Busca (popular party), and the institutional and economic instability it provoked, within a continuum of tensions and agitations that had their first manifestations in the late thirteenth century. Her exhaustively documented research described issues that were still rather unstudied at the time. Later, Pere Ortí i Gost (2000) analytically reinterpreted the institutional evolution of the urban council with a deep examination of its fiscal system.36

Within this basic overview of Barcelonese historiography, we may also include the efforts of Teresa Maria Vinyoles Vidal to combine these economic and institutional approaches with a wide-ranging interest in the daily life of Barcelonese citizens in the twilight of the Middle Ages. She recreated these lives by combining sources like notarial deeds, trials, art, and contemporary literature.37

However, as I have already mentioned, these economic, political, fiscal, social, and even cultural accounts of the history of Barcelona gave little space to the analysis of citizenship. The picture is different for the Early Modern period, mainly because of the studies of James Amelang. His book, Honored Citizens of Barcelona: Patrician

Culture and Class Relations, 1490-1714, richly detailed the formation of the honoured

citizenry in terms of its cultural distinction. Nonetheless, little has been done for the previous period, despite a very abundant source base that is far from unknown. Carrère read citizenship reports and registers when defining the legal framework in which merchants, the major protagonists of her work, operated. In so doing, her aim was to localise those foreign merchants who chose to become citizens in order to improve their situation in the city. Carrère briefly defined the basic criteria required to acquire a citizenship charter (honourability, sufficient means, residence in the city, fiscal contributions, and the intention to remain) and named a few candidates clearly identified as strangers to the crown of Aragon. This analysis, which occupied less than

36_{Pere Ortí i Gost, Renda i fiscalitat. In matters of indirect taxation, Ortí’s precursor was: Jean Broussolle,}

“Les impositions municipales de Barcelone de 1328 à 1462,” Estudios de Historia Moderna V (1955): 3-164. The earlier formation of a ruling class has been studied by Stephen. P. Bensh, Barcelona i els seus

dirigents 1060-1291, (Barcelona: Proa, 2000) [Barcelona and its rulers 1096-1291, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995)].

37_{Teresa-Maria Vinyoles i Vidal, La vida quotidiana a Barcelona vers 1400, (Barcelona: Fundació Salvador}

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one page in a book more than one thousand pages long, closed with the following consideration: ‘certainly, the possibility of becoming a citizen of Barcelona was only a marginal element within the liberty offered to foreign merchants.’38 _{In contrast, Maria}

Elisa Soldani gave a more comprehensive picture of the citizen of Barcelona, using the citizenship applications of the Tuscan merchants she studied to delineate the main features of the Barcelonese citizen (stable residence, intention to remain, property, fiscal contribution, and marriage with a Catalan woman). Bringing up the cultural concerns mentioned above, Soldani teased from the sources themselves the importance of reputation in recognising citizens of Barcelona.39 _{Portraying the vibrancy}

of these very same sources, Teresa Vinyoles i Vidal provided a varied, albeit brief, array of case studies whereby she identified what she considered to be the defining features of the citizen: stable residence, marriage, profession, and fiscal contribution.40

These scholars had only a fleeting interest in citizenship. Consequently, their reading of the conserved citizenship reports and registers was incomplete. Most importantly, their own research interests conditioned their view on the figure of the citizen, placing different degrees of priority on what they interpreted as its main characteristics. They all pointed towards the flexibility and variability of citizenship status, but this can only be fully grasped through a complete exploration of citizenship sources.

When Carrère was writing, such an investigation had already been completed. In 1957, Eulàlia Duran i Grau based her unpublished BA thesis on a detailed exploration of the citizenship reports and registers of Barcelona, which are conserved in the

38_{Claude Carrère, Barcelona 1380-1462. Un centre econòmic en època de crisi, (Barcelona : Curial, 1977)}

[Barcelone centre économique à l’époque des difficultés. 1380-1462, (Paris-La Haye : Mouton&Co, 1967], 29-30.

39_{Soldani, Uomini d’affari e mercanti toscani, 133-134.}

40_{Vinyoles, La vida, 80-86. Some contributions have also been done in the field of legal history. In her}

attempt to shape in historical terms the legal condition of the ‘Catalan’ (in the context of transition to democracy and the composition of ‘estatutos de autonomía’), Encarna Roca pushed back her analysis to the first privileges and jurists’ comments related to the citizen of Barcelona. Encarna Roca i Trias, “’Unde Cathalanus quasi in Cathalonia stans,’La condición de catalán en el derecho histórico,” Revista Jurídica

de Cataluña 77/1, (1978): 7-44. In the same direction, Pilar Domínguez Lozano, Las circunstancias personales determinantes de la vinculación con el Derecho Local. Estudio sobre el Derecho Local Altomedieval y el Derecho Local de Aragón, Navarra y Cataluña (siglos IX-XV), (Madrid: Ediciones de la

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1986), particularly 174-181. Studying the reflections of the seventeenth-century jurist Joan Fontanella, Montserrat Bajet also referred, as Fontanella did himself, to older definitions of the Barcelonese citizen. Montserrat Bajet i Royo, “Ciutadans de Barcelona, ciutadans honrats i donzells en l’obra de Fontanella,”Barcelona. Quaderns d’Història 5, (2001):159-170.

15

Historical Archives of the City (AHCB) and are known as the Informacions de la

Ciutadania.41 _{In her intensive work, Duran, who afterwards developed very different}

concerns, went through all the citizenship reports and registers conserved for the period 1375 to 1457. Her work has been very useful throughout this research, notably for the complete list of candidates (1,111) she provided. However, at that time she opted for quantitative analysis: she was principally interested in using the Informacions to give a fixed picture of Barcelona’s society at the dawn of the fifteenth century. Rich in tables and graphs, her work is predominantly focussed on relating the principal origins and professions of the candidates to the citizenship charter. Using Duran’s early work as a starting point, my dissertation aims to further explore the richness of the

Informacions, an archival series of a unique nature. Placing on a single stage both

Barcelonese reporting on candidates and the candidates themselves, the Informacions give life to the dialogue of citizenship and therefore make it possible to delve into the fabrics of social daily relationships. By reaching into the ‘deepest life of the city,’ my work will be a history of the social imagination of citizenship.42

SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY.

The Informacions de la Ciutadania and the Notarial Registers: A Research Strategy.

The thesis starts therefore from a very definite body of sources: the Informacions de la

Ciutadania, which include a large number of citizenship reports from the period

between 1395 and 1457. Essentially, the Informacions contain numerous interrogation reports of other Barcelonese on the habits of those requesting a citizenship charter. There are also two citizenship registers recording the actual grant of charters for two periods: 1375-1381 (36 f.) and 1413-1425 (192f.) To the best of my knowledge, these sources are unique. While citizenship procedures can be mostly retraced in other cities through lists of accepted citizens or scattered privileges, detailed interrogations on the

41_{Eulàlia Duran i Grau, “Apuntes para un estudio sobre la obtención de la ciudadanía de Barcelona a}

fines de la Edad Media (1375-1457),” (BA thesis, University of Barcelona, 1957). I am grateful to Prof. Duran for her personal attention, her interest in this research, and her openness in providing me with a copy of her work.

42_{On the importance of sociability; Amelang, Gent de la Ribera, 19. I borrow from Amelang the}

expression ‘social imagination.’ Amelang, Gent de la Ribera, 23. As with Amelang himself, I use the term here with no theoretical sociological meaning: I refer solely to the capacity of the Informacions to provide an actual idea of the opinions of fifteenth-century Barcelonese on citizenship.

16

habits of the candidates have not been conserved, or at least certainly not in the same scale, richness, or condition as those from Barcelona. This does not mean that public interrogations as part of citizenship acquisition processes were unique to the Catalan city. On the contrary, it is known that the adequacy of candidates as citizens was tested through public opinion in Toledo, Venice, and Florence, albeit in specific circumstances. Documentary traces of such practices, however, have not been conserved, either because they were not properly recorded or because they have been lost.43 _{For the case of Barcelona, the nature of these sources will be described in more}

detail in chapter III, where they will be used to reproduce the actual procedure of citizenship acquisition. The following section will briefly discuss the decisions and interests that have determined the corpus of sources at the basis of the research.

My primary intention was to read and analyse all the documents included within the fonds of citizenship sources, just as Eulàlia Duran did herself. To do this, an Access database was designed with the intention of registering the details of the main protagonists of the Informacions: the candidates, witnesses, and guarantors of the charters. As far as possible, I included information on their status, their places of residence, their professions, family relations, and other social relationships. However, it was soon evident that, despite their multi-faceted and exceptional nature, the

Informacions could not always give a deep image of these individuals’ conditions as

citizens. Other sources needed to be analysed in order to test the strength of the connections emerging from the Informacions and, eventually, to investigate the nature of these bonds when too few details were provided. This concern for further grasping the emplacement of candidates in the city took me to the notarial archives of the city (AHPB). With more than 3,500 registers produced by 197 notaries from the late thirteenth to the mid fifteenth centuries,44 _{the Notarial Archives of Barcelona are one}

43_{Pilar Morollón Hernández, “La vecindad en la ciudad de Toledo hacia 1400,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma.} Serie III. Historia Medieval 17, (2004): 189. In Florence, the potential access of foreign citizens to public

office was only possible if approved by public opinion, De Angelis, “La cittadinanza a Firenze,” 146. In Venice, native citizenship could be tested through public opinion, whereas a foreigner without a privilege needed to prove his rights to be treated as a citizen by appealing to public opinion. Mueller,

Immigrazione e cittadinanza, 45. 44_{On the Notarial Archives of Barcelona:}

http://arxiu.notarisdecatalunya.org:8081/AdminPaginas/SobreAhPB/9ea22dbd-4a9b-40fd-8554-a55b4b6442b9 . The Archives are digitalizing their fonds and it is now possible to access digitalised versions of 45 notaries. For a catalogue regarding the fourteenth and fifteenth-century registers, see: